“More Human Than Human”
Thursday, October 27th, 2011I’ve read that, recently, IBM was able to simulate 4.5 percent of the human brain on a computer system. They estimate that they will be able to simulate it all in about eight years.
A program at a tech conference in India has supposedly already passed the Turing test, fooling a majority of human judges into thinking that they were conversing with another human being, instead of with a chat program.
I wonder what will happen when we cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is simulation.
Is it ethically wrong to treat an indistinguishable simulation of a person differently than you would a real person? Can a program have a soul? Do people have souls? How can you tell either way? Does it, in the end, matter?
If a machine can be just as human as we are, what does it mean to be human at all?
Machines are already stronger, faster and more resilient than us. Programs have bested chess Masters and Jeopardy champions. Apple’s new iPhone can understand you well enough to act as a somewhat limited personal assistant. The ability to simulate a human brain, in software, could take that much further.
What if a machine/program can be a better human being than I can?
Eight years.
We live in interesting times.